


Seven Levels

by Bobblychicken



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies), Planes (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:01:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23338816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobblychicken/pseuds/Bobblychicken
Summary: Just giving you all an idea of what's at stake if my sinister cult of humans, the Cutters (first introduced in Capture and Release and in If You Tame Me), were to succeed in their dark purpose. DO NOT READ if you don't want to see very bad things happening to talking airplanes. Takes place immediately before If You Tame Me.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 6





	Seven Levels

The high RPM roar of an engine had been ringing continuously on throughout the block for the last two hours now. How far underground they were in the endless system of concrete tunnels and bunkers was impossible to tell in so barren and featureless an environment. The florescent lighting did little to illuminate the space, giving everything the hue of brackish, dirty green water.

The plane behind the furious engine noise, a little Alpha Robin, hunkered down in its restraints as it's anxiety intensified with every passing minute and the steadily increasing temperature of its engine. Every now and then it would shift around in discomfort. It's engine cowling had been partially separated, and various wires and sensors ran from each side down into different machines and monitors, one of which, a human idly standing at the controls, was keeping keeping it running up into the upper reaches of its RPMs. The heat was becoming quite severe. The plane was far beyond any sort of begging or voicing its fatigue or pain at this point, this not being this particular individual's first time on the dynamo, but still could not help a pleading glance over at the blank-faced humans either just milling about or recording every detail of the process. The Alpha Robin had then set into a type of deep, hyperventilating panting, a last-ditch effort by an airplane to move air over their engines if they find themselves overheating.

“I think that's a wrap, boss,” one of the humans said. “Oh, no, wait a second.”

The plane had stopped, breathing hard through its intake for a few seconds but shortly going back into its desperate panting again.

“Nope, I was right the first time; this is it,” concluded the human. “Do you want us to remove it now, Doctor?”

“When it collapses completely and stops moving, Wade,” answered the Doctor, not looking up from his reports before adding in a polite, level tone, “I thought I'd made that perfectly clear the last few times, the precise time the dynamo should be shut down. It's very important.”

“But you don't want it to go into engine failure do you?” Wade asked, a shade of anxiety creeping into his voice. “If it-”

“No!” interjected the Doctor quickly, as though to head him off before he could say more. “It's nothing to do with _want_ ,” he went on after a moment, collecting himself. “This experiment is not _intended_ to lead to failure; not this time anyway. And probably not the next time either, depending on the results of course.”

There was a crash, and the two humans looked over to see the plane finally collapse, going down on its right side. It attempted to hobble back up again, only to have its left side give out, this time going down for good. The Doctor clicked the stopwatch icon on one of the monitors. With smoke pouring from the gaps in its cowling, the Alpha Robin continued to gasp, but its eyes remained closed. The other humans in the room took their positions, removing the diagnostic equipment, wearing heavy gloves and uniforms to protect themselves from the intense heat radiating from the engine. The poor plane shuddered and cried out as water from a hose was poured, none too gently, over its engine, hissing on contact and causing a good amount of steam to billow forth.

“Don't remove the temperature gauge or the dynamo, and don't turn it off completely,” the Doctor was saying, “Just lower the RPMs until it's properly cooled.”

“How did we do this time, chief?” inquired Wade in a rather sycophantic tone, as if the time was something that could be to the Doctor's personal credit.

“About six and a half minutes longer than the last test,” he answered, looking at the data sheet. “And that makes about twelve minutes longer than the one before that. It's rather remarkable really. It definitely points to evidence that there is some biological components to even the more mechanical parts of these creatures for them to have the ability to adapt like that.”

Once the Alpha Robin's engine was back down to normal levels, the plane was re-caged and the cage towed back to it's respective block, Wade and the Doctor following it in the jeep.

“So, Wade,” the Doctor said once they were off, “I've heard reports that one of the young males in that family group that we captured was found dead in it's cage this morning. Do we know how the rest are getting on?”

Several days earlier the capture team had happened upon a family of Piper PA-39s, three adolescents, two males and one female, and their parents. It was an easy capture, really, once the young were separated from their parents the instinct to freeze and creche together took over and they were easy pickings. The parents came just as easily in their effort to try and rescue them. Once back at the main base the family was separated by age and sex and sent to their respective blocks.

“Well I've only really had contact with the adult female,” Wade began, “She still thrashes a lot, and... and cries from time to time.” The Doctor gave him a look of just barely hooded scrutiny. “Well, makes noises anyway.”

They arrived at Block D, the cage and its still unconscious occupant being rolled down the line. As the cage neared the third cell down from the right, that cage's occupant rushed the bars, its engine snarling and roaring as it cursed the humans drawing the procession.

“Where're my mate and children, you bastards?!” it roared.

“Well, there it is,” Wade observed, “Looks like Dad's still adjusting too.”

“Yes, well we might have to consider that one for the Retrorsum if he carries on like that for much longer,” the Doctor added. “We can't keep risking our personnel keeping the more aggressive ones around. Good men are getting as hard to come by as new test subjects.”

As the plane continued to bite and scrabble against its prison, all over the block, other aircraft, agitated at the sudden clamor, took their cues.

“Why don't you shut up!”

“I'd fight you alright, if I could only get at you!”

“D'you think you're the only one who hates this damned place?!”

“Why can't we have some peace?”

They were all smaller, light aircraft. Most under twenty five feet long, although they were capable of capturing aircraft a little bit bigger. Jets were next to impossible to bring in, or at least keep alive. Even the smallest jets would put up so much of a struggle and difficulty in catching that it couldn't be done without injuring them, and once back to base they would only die of stress and/or their injuries in a matter of days.

Meanwhile, the Alpha Robin was currently coming around as its cage was loaded back into its spot at the end of the block. Wade and the Doctor supervised and recorded its recovery as it slowly came to, wobbling up stiffly and slinking into the farthest corner where it cowered in the darkness.

They packed up and continued on in the jeep, becoming engrossed in the continuing conversation of the problem of the ever-dwindling population of test subjects. Of course, it was common knowledge that they couldn't just go on capturing new ones forever. The Vivens machina would eventually become wary, and therefore take precautions to make themselves more elusive, which was what was happening now. Thus they had rejoiced when initial dissections revealed that they indeed possessed reproductive equipment, which confirmed that they do indeed reproduce in a “traditional” fashion. They had immediately made plans to start getting the planes in their captivity to breed so that they would have a continuous, steady supply of fresh test subjects that would be clean slates to test ever more creative ways of ascertaining their limits and power of adaptability.

They had already started construction on expanding the compound and building specially made bunkers where they would expose different groups to different adverse weather conditions so as to confuse them when eventually released into normal weather conditions. Plans included a bunker with artificial lighting to simulate perpetual sunshine, and of course another would simulate perpetual darkness. Others would be built where it rained 24 hours a day, where the wind constantly blew only from the north-west, and more with snow, sleet, and thick fog. One would be kept uncommonly cold, while another unbearably hot. They would have a bunker that simulated the night sky only with the constellations out of order, and yet another where the sun rotated the wrong way.

Planes born into these cruel bunkers would know no other weather patterns, and that's not to leave out the ones that would be excised from their mothers mid-gestation to have one or both eyes or any of their other faculties damaged or destroyed, and then put back to finish out development. Of course, the consensus among those humans working at the facility was that in all likelihood most of those released would simply fly straight out to sea and perish, even though that in itself would still be quite interesting.

Unfortunately, or else fortunately, they had had no luck getting the aircraft to breed on their own, and all of their attempts at artificial insemination had so far failed to take. It was baffling to say the least, but understandable. Apart from what they had out in front of them, they knew almost nothing about reproduction in aircraft; if they had seasons or else if they were induced ovulators or if any of that varied from model to model. The only time they had come anywhere near having a birth happen in the compound was when a female was captured that was already pregnant, and even then they had never known that it was, until during an endurance test the stress caused it to miscarry, the mother soon dying itself after hemorrhaging for almost forty-five minutes despite their best efforts to resuscitate it. After that incident the practice of scanning all aircraft determined as female became mandatory, although the opportunity had never presented itself again.

Not that any of that had anything to do with what their ultimate goal as Cutters was, but the Doctor had his duties. He saw himself as a qualified expert. Initiative was expected of him for the good of man-kind, his subjects had no legal rights as far as he was concerned, and intellectual curiosity is, after all, a desire like any other.

It has since been a little over half a century since what remained of the human race had started trickling in to this “side of the sky”, as their captives commonly put it. No one had any inkling of the cataclysmic celestial event that knocked their reality off its course and onto the same plane of reality that another world, almost identical to theirs, already rested on, other than odd mirages and shadows. Sometimes a car or other machine would suddenly appear to move on its own, and near collisions in the air by airplanes would turn into utter confusion as one would simply end up passing through another without harm. Strange artifacts would appear from time to time, and sometimes you'd find a bug in your tea. A literal Bug. And then one day you might just be out walking, going about your day and blink and suddenly find yourself in a completely different place even though you were right where you were, only in a different yet nearly identical reality.

It has been estimated that out of a population of a little over seven billion, a little less than three hundred million made it across to the other side along with with a fair few of their own machines and even some fauna. All had come in at different times in the span of a about fifty years. There had been no reports of newcomers for a long while now, it being largely hypothesized that the rest had all been obliterated along with their dimension in the final stages of the collision.

Things had been going as well as to be expected, honestly, of course after the initial shock of finding their new world already inhabited by a dominant species of even more shocking a form. But the Doctor, along with more than a few like-minded individuals, knew that the human race could never be what it once was in the shadow of the already firmly established Vivens machina. No, the work they were doing here, now, even though it was largely opposed by the rest of their race, mostly in fear of retribution, he figured, was sure to set things right again. They would thank them all in the end.

They stopped by Block 16A for the Doctor to review and sign a few things. In this block all captives had special hoods over their eyes and side windows to block out sight and hearing, to of course discover the effects of having special hoods over their eyes and side windows to block out sight and hearing. There was little noise or movement in this bunker other than a single voice that kept repeating, “Oh dear, oh dear oh dear,” in a tone oddly more indicative of worry than of actual suffering. After they continued on their way, they passed by the bunker that was primarily used for all their dissections, the Cutting Block, as most referred to it. Not a soul was to be seen here at this time, save for those stiff bodies still left lying on the floor, the crop of the previous days work, neatly portioned out and all the important parts already carted off to the labs for further study.

The Jeep stopped just outside of their destination; the bunker that held the Retrorsum, the machine that would solve all of their problems. The machine that would put the Vivens machina back in the place they belonged, of course, if they could only get it to work. An awful lot of frightfully loud engine noise, roaring and snarling, along with some particularly colorful language was coming from inside. A technician approached them as they exited the Jeep.

“The latest report, Sir,” he said, handing the Doctor a clip-board with the printed report on it.

“Oh dear,” the Doctor said, reading. “What a shame! 'Resulted in the deaths of almost the entire group... some instantaneously... preceded by excessive salivation, impairment of locomotion and/or vision, involuntary twitching, black, viscous liquid discharge from the mouth and sometimes eyes and exhausts, respiratory distress, convulsions...' How disappointing!”

“Ah, yes,” Wade concurred, looking over the Doctor's shoulder. “It was rather dreadful; I was there for that one.”

“And what of the one that survived?”

“It's still with us. Although... it's not really... functioning anymore. I think it may die still. I hope... I hope to God...”

“Ah, well... Why don't you assist the dissection team in opening it up and seeing if anything's amiss; we can never find anything in the ones that are killed outright after exposure. You are up for it, yes?”

“Oh! Oh yes, of course,” Wade stammered out of his thoughts. “Only I've never really sat in on one of those before. Do we typically overdose them on the anesthetics first or-”

“Good heavens, no. That stuff is too hard to come by and expensive. Only use what you need to keep the thing immobile; it'll expire soon enough after you've gotten into it.”

“Right... Well, righty-o, Chief. I'll have the reports to you by tomorrow morning.”

Wade took the Jeep drove off back toward the Cutting Block. The Doctor gave the clip-board back before entering the bunker. He picked up another clip-board pertaining to today's subject's profile, glancing over it. American P-51 Mustang – racing subspecies... fully mature male... thirty-five point four feet long... weight is just over four and a half tons... the Doctor continued to read over the specifications. It really was a shame about this one. It had been the pride and joy of the compound, just right for their purposes, but unfortunately this one had proved to be vicious and bad tempered from the start. It had already made six escape attempts over the course of it's captivity, killing over two dozen personnel, including Captain Pembrey during it's last attempt, the team lead who had orchestrated its successful capture. Officers of his caliber didn't grow on trees, and it was a tremendous loss. It had been decided that the beast was too dangerous to be kept around, and so here it was, its engine hissing and growling with fury, ready to be subjected to the Retrorsum.

_Well_ , the Doctor thought to himself, looking up at the angry, struggling plane, _it may not be a complete waste. You may help get us one step closer to our day back in the sun yet..._


End file.
